Mario Garcia, a client at the Bailey-Boushay House at Virginia Mason, works on an art project. The organization has been offering support for people with HIV and AIDS for nearly 17 years.
Photo: Joshua Trujillo/seattlepi.com

She also met with people who helped her feel better about her homelessness, HIV infection and recovery from cocaine and alcohol abuse. She saw a nurse for her daily pills for anxiety, arthritis, a MRSA infection and heart condition.

"Without Bailey, without the nurses, I bet at least half of us wouldn't be here," said Anderson, a feisty, pixie-ish 50-year-old client of Bailey-Boushay's outpatient services.

"I would be dead, and that's a fact. It's literally a healing machine."

But the prominent Madison Valley facility -- renowned as the country's first skilled nursing home designed and built for AIDS patients -- is facing a funding crisis that may force the closure of its outpatient program.

The vast majority of the program's funding comes from the state, which is now facing a $9 billion shortfall. Separate from Bailey-Boushay's nursing home, the outpatient program serves 200 HIV and AIDS patients with mental illness, additctions, a history of homelessness and other challenges.

The program barely survived the governor's budget. It must remain in the Senate budget expected out this week, and in the House budget next week. Of the program's current $1.8 million budget, $1.1 million has come from the state.

Compounding the state funding worry is an unprecedented drop in donations, normally $1 million year. But last year, donors gave only $650,000, the lowest amount in the agency's 16-year history.

Bailey-Boushay's nursing home is also expecting budget cuts from the state this year, and the facility recently learned it would no longer be a recipient of United Way funding.

Knowles said the grim economy could mean the disappearance of the outpatient program, leaving the most challenged AIDS patients with few options for help.

"They would eventually stop being able to taking their medications successfully," he said. "They would become ill, go to the hospital through the ER. They would progress in their illness, and there would be deaths."

His clients take an average of 20 to 30 pills a day, which require a nearly 100 percent adherence rate to work successfully -- a nearly impossible rate to achieve on their own. The program offers sanctuary and three meals a day, plus nurses to dispense the often bewildering array of medications.

"I didn't have the drive to take them all the time, or I'd forget," said Nicholas Smith, a fidgety, resilient man who came for the fish, green beans and his 10 daily pills one day last week.

For Anderson, the support programs at Bailey-Boushay were salvation. "It's a very special group of people that can hang out with each other," she said. "Because the next day they might be gone."